St. Peter Astro Museum

Presenting: Renaissance Astronomers

St. Peter Astro Museum

Presenting: Renaissance Astronomers

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Be ready to learn about astronomy in Renaissance time!

We'll take you back to the early times where inventions were made that are used today! Be ready to learn about Galileo, Copernicus, Tycho, and Kepler!

Galileo Galilei

In January 1610, Galileo had discovered there were four moon revolving Jupiter. Since he taught himself the art of lens grinding, he produced an increasingly powerful telescope. He also found that with a telescope, that it showed more stars than are visible than with the naked eye! He had named the moons of Jupiter after the Medici family: the Sidera Medicea, or "Medicean Stars".

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus had made is own celestial model of a heliocentric planetary system. Copernicus believed that the planets orbit's size depended on its distance from the sun. Copernicus further developed more of his heliocentric model and designed a complex mathematical system to prove his theory.

Tycho Brahe

Brahe had made precise observations by devising the best instruments before the invention of the telescope. He had also made observations of a supernova in 1572. Brahe also made an observation of an comet in 1577. He measured the parallax for the comet to show how far away the comet was from the moon. He made the best measurements that had yet been made in the search of the stellar parallax. Since he didn't find no parallax for the stars, he had concluded that either the earth was motionless at the center of the universe or the stars were far away from the parallax that it was to small too measure.

Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler had discovered three major laws of planetary motion. He also developed an explanation for the behavior of light in the newly invented telescope. He had believed that the sun had a force that made the planets orbit around it. Kepler made is first law which was the law of orbits. Kepler had discovered the inverse square law of light intensity. He had also discovered the lenses of our eyes invert images. He decided to change Galileo's telescope design and improving it by using two convex lenses. It was for higher magnifications. His new design is now the standard design for refracting telescopes.